108 
THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSS /NLA chap. 
deepest gullies to avoid observation. Our men were always 
very nervous while in the neighbourhood of these robbers ; and 
at our night camp at Bohol-K4wulu our Jibril Abokr guide, 
rattling his spears together, shouted out a long speech into the 
darkness, telling any lurking robbers that we had guns and, 
being very powerful, were not fair game. The performance was 
gone through quite gravely, all the other men maintaining silence. 
When we entered the Gadabursi country we were visited in 
camp at Egu by a party of elephant-hunters, who rode up and 
said they had taken us for looters and had come to reconnoitre. 
We reached the Harasdwa Valley, which was very beautifully 
wooded, the undergrowth of red and yellow flowering aloes 
harmonising with the light green masses of the ergin plant, 
the dull yellow-ochre of the dry grass, and the darker blue-green 
of the thorn and hassddan 1 trees. On the evening of 25th 
September we passed, near SatUwa, the karias of Ugaz Nur, 
till lately the paramount chief of the Gadabursi tribe. This 
was the most suitable place we had yet seen for experimental 
cultivation, the Sattawa Valley having a fertile appearance, 
with deep alluvial earth and very rank vegetation. 
As we halted at Sattawa, at sunset, to form camp, there 
appeared on the scene Ugaz Nur, his son, and forty spearmen. 
He stayed in camp all night, and told us not to go to Biyo- 
Kabbba in the Esa country, which lay ahead of us, as he said 
the place was full of Abyssinian soldiers, who w 7 ere building a 
fort there, and w T ould be likely to attack us. Nur was believed 
to be an arch -scoundrel, and intriguing with the Abyssinians, 
and w 7 e were inclined to think he gave us this advice to prevent 
our inspecting the fort. He was then in disgrace with the 
British authorities because he had captured an Italian traveller 
and held him to ransom. He had just been displaced from the 
Ugazship, and his brother Elmy had been made paramount 
chief of the Gadabursi in his stead. While w 7 e were in his 
camp we heard that his brother Elmy was marching against 
him with a force from Zeila ; and soon afterwards I received an 
Arabic letter from Elmy himself asking me to help him attack 
Niir, or, at any rate, lend some rifles. One of the Ugaz’s sons, 
a youth with a large shield, a mop of hair, and tw 7 o shovel- 
headed spears, gained some importance in camp by strutting 
about taking frequent oaths that he would kill Mr. Sala, an 
Italian traveller, wdien he met him. 
1 Euphorbia. 
